"Jim, can you see anything?" asked Ladd.
"Nope, but I reckon he can."
Darkness increased momentarily till night shaded the deepest part
of the valley.
Then Ladd suddenly straightened up, turned to his horse, and
muttered low under his breath.
"I reckon so," said Lash, and for once his easy, good-natured tone
was not in evidence. His voice was harsh.
Gale's eyes, keen as they were, were last of the rangers to see
tiny, needle-points of light just faintly perceptible in the
blackness.
"Laddy! Campfires?" he asked, quickly.
"Shore's you're born, my boy."
"How many?"
Ladd did not reply; but Yaqui held up his hand, his fingers wide.
Five campfires! A strong force of rebels or raiders or some other
desert troop was camping at Coyote Tanks.
Yaqui sat his horse for a moment, motionless as stone, his dark
face immutable and impassive. Then he stretched wide his right arm
in the direction of No Name Mountains, now losing their last faint
traces of the afterglow, and he shook his head. He made the same
impressive gesture toward the Sonoyta Oasis with the same somber
negation.
Thereupon he turned Diablo's head to the south and started down
the slope. His manner had been decisive, even stern. Lash did not
question it, nor did Ladd. Both rangers hesitated, however, and
showed a strange, almost sullen reluctance which Gale had never
seen in them before. Raiders were one thing, Rojas was another;
Camino del Diablo still another; but that vast and desolate and
unwatered waste of cactus and lava, the Sonora Desert, might
appall the stoutest heart.
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